the seed at the bottom of your heart
by flowermasters
Summary: Norma studies Dylan from a distance - always from a distance.


A/N: This was inspired by a post by missbluvlavla on Tumblr; someone sent in an ask on what would happen if Norma's older brother was Dylan's father, and missbluvlavla's response essay/analysis called to me to write a fic about it. Although in this fic, it's very much an is-he-or-isn't-he situation. Also: this contains a _lot_ of trigger-y stuff.

Warnings for: incest, non-con/rape, sexual abuse, domestic/spousal abuse, mentioned child abuse, emotional neglect, highly dysfunctional relationships, some language.

This spans from Dylan's conception to an ambiguous time late- or post-season 1. Title comes from a quote by Shigenori Kameoka.

* * *

Norma turns eighteen in January, and that's the last time she sees her brother.

He comes home, ostensibly to celebrate his younger sister's birthday with her and their parents. But Norma knows what he's really after. She feels sick to her stomach the entire day, her body rebelling against her utter lack of control over this situation, but she smears a smile on her face for her parents' sake. In the afternoon, he gets her alone, and she protests but she doesn't scream, doesn't fight. She gets it over with, lets him do as he pleases, and afterwards he leaves.

She throws up the cake that her mother made in honor of the occasion, and then her stomach is finally calm. She looks in the bathroom mirror, wipes smudged mascara from around her eyes. Fixes the collar of her dress. Brushes out shiny blonde hair and puts it up in a bun. With each action, she brings back her sense of control. She brushes her teeth, and as she spits out a fizzy mouthful of mint, she thinks, _that was the last time. After this, he'll never find me again._

She leaves home within the week. She packs as many clothes as she can into a duffel bag, stuffs the money she's been meticulously hoarding since sophomore year into her wallet, and she leaves without a goodbye. John Massett waits outside for her, his Dodge truck idling at the end of her block. She hops in the front passenger seat, and he kisses her on the mouth. And then he drives off, and as they pass Norma's parents' house, Norma doesn't cry or change her mind, like she probably should. She just smoothes the fabric of her dress against her thighs with sweaty palms, and looks away. When she looks back out the window again, they're on a highway, driving towards a new beginning.

She'd met John a few months before she'd finished her last course in December (her parents thought she'd blossomed academically in high school, suddenly smart enough to finish a whole semester early; Norma had only been trying to get out as quickly as possible.) He's a little bit older than she is, so she'd heard the name but never seen the face. And what a face it is. John is handsome, charismatic. Norma'd been infatuated the moment she met him.

John has no idea why she's really leaving – she'd told him that she was a virgin before him, and he'd eaten that up with a spoon – but he wants to blow town, too, so they leave together. They end up in South Dakota, which isn't exactly grand, but it's new to Norma. Norma works at a department store, John works at a garage, and they scrape by.

Norma's no stranger to stomach problems. Whenever she's in an uncomfortable situation, her stomach will roll like some wild mythical sea inside her. (She tells anyone who asks that she just has a weak constitution – but there's nothing about Norma that's weak, damn it.) So it's easy to pass off her near-constant queasiness as a persistent illness – for a couple of months, at least.

But her period doesn't come. And then it doesn't come again.

She refuses to believe that she's pregnant, but she does the math anyway. Her last period came a week or two before her birthday – she can't quite remember the exact dates, but that's the last one she remembers. She knows what that might mean – what terrible, _terrible_ thing that it might mean – and yet she still doesn't do anything. If she pretends for long enough, or prays hard enough, everything will work out, right?

Everything doesn't work out – at least, not the way that Norma hopes it will. Weeks pass, and there's a plumpness in her belly that doesn't have anything to do with how much food she's been eating. She finally tells John, and once he's stopped panicking, he asks her to marry him.

She does – as if it will change anything in the end. As if John will stick around when she – when she gives birth to what could be – what might be – she doesn't ever dare let herself finish that thought. Norma prays to a God who doesn't seem to be listening that He'll give her John Massett's child, and clings to her sanity with clawing hands.

Dylan Massett comes into the world on a cold October night. The birth is surprisingly easy, bizarrely uncomplicated; Norma hopes, vaguely, that the rest of his little life will be the same way, but she doubts it. Dylan is normal, as far as she can tell, but that doesn't eliminate the possibility that he's – Norma stops that thought in its tracks, and swallows down the taste of bile in her throat. While she's in the hospital, she pretends to be the beaming new mother, holding her son and nursing him and changing his diapers and doing everything she's supposed to. But when she looks at him, she can't help but hear a thousand cruel little _what if_s in the corners of her mind. The baby cries often, and when no one's looking, she blinks back tears of her own, because she's holding it together but only _just_, and that frightens her more than anything.

John drives her home from the hospital two days after Dylan is born, and asks if she wants to call her folks and tell them. They don't even know Norma was ever pregnant. They don't know _anything_.

Norma tells him no, and then she cries, hard. She blames it on hormones, and John believes her. Dylan wails barely a moment later, and John takes him away, and Norma is grateful and ashamed all at once.

Dylan doesn't stay an infant forever, obviously. That's both a blessing and a curse. Dealing with a baby is stressful, and she and John fight much more often than they don't, usually with Dylan shrieking away in the background. But at the same time, Norma knows that the bigger he gets, the more recognizable his features will be, and the more apparent any defects. It's easier to pretend when he's tiny and completely dependent on her. His face is still round, plump, features too small to really identify, and for that she's grateful.

But Dylan grows like a little weed, as all children do. He's a hearty child, plump and healthy. He walks very early, and more often than not sports skinned knees and hands, thanks to his rough-and-tumble attitude about playtime. Norma's son has a fierce nature about him from the very beginning, and she knows in another life, she would love him with every ounce of her heart. In another life, she'd adore him for the parts of him that are undeniably hers – his blue eyes (with just a touch of gray), his dirty blond hair.

But in this life, she looks at him and she searches for traces of her brother in him. His nose – there's something about the shape of his little nose. She tries to convince herself that it's her nose, but in her heart, she knows. In her heart, Dylan is not quite hers.

Her emotional distance from her son takes its toll on her relationship with John – a relationship which, even at the best of times, leaves more to be desired. Norma decides she doesn't love John a few months after Dylan's first birthday, and not long after that Sam Bates walks into the department store where Norma is a cashier.

She never means to sleep with Sam, but she does. He's charismatic, even more so than John – he's not as handsome, but she's so desperate for love at the moment that it doesn't matter. She sleeps with Sam once, and once turns into twice, and then somewhere between the third and the fourth time, she falls in love. She's almost _obsessed_ with him, and the distraction that he provides from her normal life. He's equally obsessed with her, perhaps more so, and she revels in it quietly.

Norma's never been a particularly good liar, but John seems to turn a blind eye to it for a while. The affair lasts for nearly a year before John finally tells her that he knows. Norma's first instinct is to fight, to deny and to raise hell – she doesn't know why, because she doesn't particularly care about losing John. Maybe she'd just feel too guilty if she didn't at least put up a fight.

Her relationship with John collapses entirely, and for a brief period she's alone, except for Dylan. Dylan, who already seems destined to be just out of her reach – and she forever out of his. He's still so tiny, so tender, but his blue eyes hold so much. She'll realize later that Dylan has always _known_, somehow.

She moves in with Sam, and then she marries him. For a little while, things are happy. But then she starts noticing little things – little things like Sam's paranoia, or the mean look he gets in his eyes sometimes when he looks at Dylan. Norma refuses to acknowledge that this could possibly be a mistake; no, she loves Sam, and Sam loves her, and that's what she tells herself. The perfect way to clear up any problems, she decides, is to have a baby. Yes, a baby, who'll be all hers and who will love her, unconditionally – a baby who won't look up at her with plaintive eyes, because this baby will never lack for affection. _This baby will never lack for anything_, she decides, and she gets pregnant shortly after that.

Norman's birth is different from Dylan's, dramatically so. She's in labor for hour after hour, but she holds it together because this is _her_ baby. The birth itself is bloody and agonizing, but it's worth it when the doctor lifts Norman up, a squalling, bloody infant, so new and so small. Norma's never been happier than she is in that moment, never been so happy to be so tired and yet so alive.

Norman is her baby, and he's definitely Sam's, but he doesn't turn out to be the solution to everything like she hoped he would be. Sam hits her for the first time three weeks after Norman is born. Sam's just come home from work, and Norman is crying while she hurriedly searches for clean diapers.

"Would you shut him up?" Sam snaps, all his charm and charisma replaced by something uglier, something dark that Norma will come to know well.

"Oh, _you_ shut up," Norma responds hotly. She's at her wit's end, and it shows. "Would _you_ like to stand here and –,"

Sam slaps her so fast that she doesn't even have time to flinch, let alone scream or duck. She just stands there for a second afterwards, absolutely stunned, while Norman continues to howl. The room is silent otherwise. When Norma finally turns her head, tears welling in her eyes, Sam is already walking away, growling something under his breath as he goes. The front door slams a moment later, and Norma lets out one choked sob before she clamps a hand over her mouth. The room finally goes quiet – Norman has tired himself out – and for a minute, Norma just stands there and tries to hold herself together.

And then she hears a little voice say, "Mama?"

She turns. She'd almost forgotten that Dylan was even in the room, but there he is, standing up in his playpen. He's still in his pajamas – she never had a free moment to dress him – and he's staring at her, wide-eyed.

"What, Dylan?" she says, voice shaking. She knows she should go to him, comfort him, and gently explain what he's seen. But she can't. Something – the tingling pain in her cheek, the old ghost of her brother's hand on her throat – keeps her from doing anything at all.

Norman lets out a weak wail then, and she turns back around to tend to him. Dylan doesn't say anything, and when she looks at him again, he's sitting in the playpen, his back to her. When she passes the playpen on her way out of the room, she reaches in, brushes her fingers over the back of his head – a rare caress. Fleeting, yes, but it's the best she can give him.

After that, she throws herself into taking care of Norman. Norman is her third fresh start of many – John was the first and Sam the second – but Norman is the only one that ever lasts. Norman loves her, no matter what. Norman loves her when he's six months old and Sam gives her a black eye and she wants to leave but can't. Norman loves her when he's three and she yells at seven-year-old Dylan for getting into a scuffle at school. Norman loves her when he's five and Sam nearly kills Dylan, wrapping a big hand around a fragile throat until Dylan goes limp and Norma screams (but doesn't move.) Norman loves her when he's almost ten and Dylan comes home _drunk_ – at thirteen, her son is already so lost – and tells her that he hates her.

Norman loves her in all the ways that Dylan hates her, and Norma loves Norman in all the ways she's never been able to love Dylan. Norma wishes it was as simple as it sounds, but nothing has ever been simple for Norma Bates.

Dylan doesn't walk away when he turns eighteen – he runs. Norma vaguely remembers being his age and being so desperate to get away that she shacked up with the first cute boy with a car – but she's spent so long _not_ thinking back that doing so now literally hurts. She convinces herself that she has everything she needs with Dylan gone, and that there is no void in her heart where he should be. She hangs on to Norman with even more ferocity, because she's lost far too much in this world, and she doesn't plan on losing anymore.

Norma had always known she was destined to lose Dylan. She never thinks he'll come back.

But he does; he crash-lands into her new life, her life with Norman after Sam. Her wayward son returns home, and she's not sure how she feels about it. On the one hand, Dylan is dangerous, a risk she can't afford to keep around for long. He jeopardizes her relationship with Norman – he makes Norma feel _weak_. But on the other hand, there's something different about Dylan now. Something, and she doesn't know what, has changed. Norma Bates does not like being out of the loop, especially not when it comes to her sons.

At first, she thinks it's just his appearance that makes him seem so different. He's bigger than he was at eighteen. He's imposing, now – broad-shouldered and fierce. He's not the child who built sandcastles with Norman when they were little. He's not the skinny boy he was when he spit in Sam's face and earned a beating for his troubles. He's not the teenager he was when Norma caught him coming home night after night, smelling of smoky rebellion. No – he's the man who has lived through all of that. He's got a beard, he drives a motorcycle, and he calls her Norma to her _face_. He is a grown man, and it disorients her, because she's spent so long looking at her child from afar that she can't believe she's missed this.

But it's not just his body or his age, she realizes after a while. She notices little things that clue her in to what has really changed. It's in his face when she hits him, after he taunts her about Norman – there's fury there, but also _hurt_, and he doesn't hit her back even though she expects him to. She sees that same pain in his face at the police station, when she tells both of her sons to go away. Dylan is still an angry soul, but he's hurting, worse now than he ever has been. He still hates her, but it hurts him to do it.

But then Dylan kills Shelby – he _saves_ her. Dylan, the boy she's never been able to love with all her heart, _saves_ her. She holds him tight in her arms for a moment afterwards, so relieved she can barely breathe, and she hears the relief, the desperation, the ache in his voice as he says, "We're safe." It's the first time in her life that she's ever genuinely wanted to _hold_ him.

Of course, it doesn't last. There are twenty-one years of brokenness between them – one hug won't change that. One almost-dinner together, without Norman, can't erase the years she sat by, unable to bridge the gap between the two of them. One 'Mom' can't silence the part of her that knows where Dylan might come from – the part of her that fears what he might represent, and all the pain it caused.

But everything has to start somewhere.

She studies her son in the moments when he thinks she's not looking – he never thinks she has eyes only for him, and she rarely does, but she starts trying after the mess with Shelby and Abernathy. Dylan is made up of jagged pieces, held together by a fierce refusal to fall apart. He hides how lost he is in an endless search for something, anything, to make him feel needed. He's spent his entire life running from things that will hurt him, keeping his own demons at bay by the skin of his teeth. But Dylan is a survivor; he will fight tooth and nail to keep himself alive, and now, to keep Norma and Norman safe. He is a force to be reckoned with, her oldest son, and it's obvious where he gets that from.

Norma Bates wastes years looking for pieces of someone else in her son, but in the end, she only finds herself.


End file.
